Juliet McMaster (email: juliet.mcmaster@ualberta.ca), a long-time member of JASNA, is
the author of Jane Austen the Novelist and of
books on Thackeray, Trollope, and Dickens, and co-editor
of The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. She is
University Professor of English the University of
Alberta, and General Editor of the Juvenilia Press.

Victoria Kortes-Papp
is a Ph.D. candidate at Quebec
City’s Université Laval, and is writing her dissertation
on “Madness and Illness in the Writings of Frances
Burney.” Her paper “Madness as Shelter for
Feminist Ideas: Elinor’s Role in The Wanderer,” will
soon appear in the journal Lumen. Ms. Kortes-Papp
was a speaker at the JASNA Super-Regional Conference in
May in Jasper, Alberta. She was also co-convenor of the
1999 JASNA AGM held in Quebec City.

We present this paper as a
dialogue between the General Editor of the Juvenilia Press, which
is a pedagogical enterprise, and a student participant in the
recent edition of Austens Evelyn written at about
16. We hope in this way to involve the reader in an ongoing
learning process too, as we address the learning potential in
annotating, introducing, and illustrating Jane Austens
youthful writings.

Juliet: Young
Jane Austen dedicated a piece of her early writings to each of
her parents, two cousins, and most of her brothers; but Cassandra
was privileged in receiving no less than three dedications. And
in the dedicatory letter to the third work, Catharine or the
Bower, which she wrote in 1792 when she was sixteen, Jane
makes reference to the other two pieces:

Encouraged by
your warm patronage of The beautiful Cassandra, and the
History of England, which through your generous support,
have obtained a place in every library in the kingdom and
run through threescore editions, I take the liberty of
begging the same Exertions in favour of the following
Novel ... (Catharine, 1)1

Its a delight
to hear this young author fantasizing, however playfully, about
the "threescore editions" of her works, and their
placement in libraries throughout the kingdom. Here writes the
fledgling professional.

The dedicatory
letters to the juvenilia suggest to me that Jane made an original
and separate version of each work, perhaps a little volume like
those the Bronte children famously stitched together, before she
copied them all into her Volume the First, Volume the Second, and
Volume the Third. The patron who receives a dedication,
surely, expects also to receive a copy of the book itself.

Those little objects,
if they ever existed, have been lost, by cousins and brothers
with other things to take care of. But the Juvenilia Press has
reincarnated them in a series of slender volumes that treat each
work of Janes juvenilia separately, conferring an
individual identity and full critical and scholarly attention on
each, as we believe they deserve. These little books have certain
advantages over the homogenised collections in Chapmans
volume of Minor Works or Doody and Murrays Catharine
and Other Writings. And in this process we involve young
scholars, students who then suddenly find themselves, for all the
lapse of years, in an intimate relation with this ebullient young
author.

The Juvenilia Press,
as many Persuasions readers know, is dedicated to the
recovery and editing of childhood works by major authors, and it
is part of our mandate that students should participate in the
editing process, working alongside more experienced scholars. We
have published early works by big names, including Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, Charlotte and Branwell Bronte, Louisa May
Alcott, and even a big living novelist like Margaret Atwood. In
the pipeline are volumes by John Ruskin, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, and Katherine Mansfield. But Jane Austen has
been our mainstay and our patron saint. Without Jane we
wouldnt have got off the ground, let alone published the
twenty-one volumes the Press now has to its credit. And Im
proud to say that in the process of producing separate editions
of nine of her delectable juvenile writings, we have benefited
from the talents not only of the likes of Jan Fergus, Rachel
Brownstein, and Peter Sabor, who have all edited volumes, but
also from dozens of their students and mine, graduate and
undergraduate, who have found in their editorial labours a unique
angle on Jane Austens creative consciousness.

Evelyn,
published in October 1999, is the latest Austen volume out from
the Juvenilia Press. It was edited by Peter Sabor and a group of
graduate students at Université Laval - the same team who also
organized the memorable 1998 JASNA AGM in Quebec City. I now hand
over the pen to Victoria Kortes-Papp, who wrote the Introduction
to this wonderfully funny and irreverent narrative, and who
writes of her own experience in the editing project.

Victoria: It
is rare to be asked to reflect on research in terms of process;
but that is especially appropriate when considering the nature of
Juvenilia Press publications, in which the learning process is a
major motive for the publication. Besides our leader, Professor
Peter Sabor, our research group working on the edition of Evelyn
was made up of graduate students. Research experience varies
among the members of our group, but we all have a commitment to
scholarship that is not strictly limited to the framework of
formal degree requirements. Yet once we started on the edition,
each of us realized that this project would have us working in
ways very different from what we had previously known. First, we
quickly had to adapt to working together as an eight-person team,
when usually we work individually, sometimes even competing with
one another. We also had to learn to negotiate constructive
criticism from and toward our peers, when we had been used to
leaving critiquing to professors. Of course, for most members of
our group, this was a first experience with having research
published. With it came the kind of commitment every one needs to
make in order to achieve the level of faultlessness that a
published piece requires. We became aware of the responsibility
that comes with publishing: that what we write is for many
reading eyes, and has a greater permanence that what we were used
to writing. We discovered that we had to find our own authority,
and our own voice.

Juliet: A
particular part of scholarly discipline that students dont
usually get the chance to practise is annotation. And the
annotation of a text of young Austens does lend itself to
team work, since we can divide up aspects like literary
reference, travel and coaches, dress and fashion, and so on, so
that each annotator has the chance to become something of a
specialist. When you move in to look very closely at a text, as
editing requires you to do, you discover the need to think, read
about, and ultimately explain innumerable references.

Some will need
explaining because the passage of time has made them unfamiliar:
(What is pomatum, a pelisse, a phaeton, a Minuet de la Cour?);
some because they belong to Jane Austens English language,
history and geography, not ours: what does Cockylorum mean, what
is the origin of the phrase "at sixes and sevens"? Who
were Perkin Warbeck, Jane Shore, Blair? Where are Brighthelmstone, Matlock,
Dunbeath?

All of these, with
explanations as sought out by student annotators, appear among
the notes in our editions. In the course of finding out the
information, the students develop research skills, and presently
a fuller intimacy with Jane Austens life and times. And
there is a real art to providing an explanation that is brief,
pointed, and interesting.

Closer to home for
students in English departments are the references to the
literature that Jane Austen knew and referred to. The annotators
of Love and Freindship and Catharine had to
acquaint themselves, even if only slightly, with Burneys Evelina,
Eliza Bromleys Laura and Augustus, Hannah
Mores Coelebs in Search of a Wife, Charlotte
Smiths Emmeline and Ethelinde, and many
others. Here there are more chances to make critical points about
Jane Austen herself, because in following through her literary
references one learns to put together something like a map of her
cultural range of reference.

"At a very early
age she was enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque," wrote
Henry Austen.2 Indeed she rather prided
herself on being a Gilpinite. Many of us register so much, and
pass on. But if its your job to annotate, you need to get
harder information. A reference in Love and Freindship
produces this note:

62. [The note
number reminds you that we annotate amply!] Gilpins
Tour to the Highlands: William Gilpins Observations,
Relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty ... (London,
1789), was one of three books which outlined his ideal of
beauty in nature while describing his tours through parts
of Britain. Gilpin was considered an expert on the
picturesque, an ideal of beauty which favoured disarray,
reacting against the order of Neo-Classicism. Austen aims
her youthful pen at Gilpin once again in The History
of England (Doody and Murray, 138). (Love and
Freindship, 42)

The student who
composes such a note is primed to appreciate Austens
further Gilpin-related jokes in the novels; for instance
Mariannes "passion for dead leaves" (SS
88), or Elizabeths cheerful refusal to join Darcy and the
Bingley sisters in the shrubbery at Netherfield, because the
three of them are already "charmingly groupd," as
she says, and a fourth would spoil the picture (PP53).
The notes on Gilpin can touch on this development, and so
demonstrate a connection and coherence in Austens
developing position on an important aesthetic idea of her day.

Young Jane Austen was
one of the great parodists in the history of literature. Because
of her stature, indeed, her parodies are often more famous than
the works they parody. Though readers of Persuasions
probably know Northanger Abbey a lot better than The
Mysteries of Udolpho, those who do know Udolpho will
probably admit that the reading of it enhanced their appreciation
of Northanger Abbey. The student whose enlarged reading
enables him to recognize and explain a reference in a parody in
Austen is likely to feel a keen sense of discovery, like that
"watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his
ken."

So one particular set
of notes in the Juvenilia Press editions relates to young
Janes reading and her literary references. In these, by
judicious quotations, the tyro editor can reconnect her parody to
the work she is taking off. Love and Freindship, subtitled
a novel in a series of letters, for instance, is a parody
not only of the sentimental novel in general, but of one in
particular, an anonymous novel of 1784, Laura and Augustus
(also subtitled "in a series of letters").3A good deal
of sighing, weeping, and fainting goes on in both narratives.
"For six hours, she was in successive fits," we hear of
the pathetic heroine in the original novel (III, 135). Jane
pounces on this suggestion that someone is standing by with a
stopwatch. "For two hours did I rave thus madly," - her
Laura records in the first person; and she seems to be rather
proud of her athletic prowess: "... and [I] should not then
have left off, for I was not in the least fatigued"(L&F
26). While she thus amuses herself by choosing to run mad,
Austens Laura has a memorable mad speech:

"Give me
a violin - . Ill play to him & sooth him in his
melancholy Hours - Beware ye gentle Nymphs of
Cupids Thunderbolts, avoid the piercing shafts of
Jupiter ... I see a Leg of Mutton ..." (25-6)

The parodic speech is
funny by itself, but its funnier still if you know the
original it bounces off. At the point where Austen tells us Laura
is "raving in a frantic, incoherent manner" (25) our
annotators attach a note:

54. frantic,
incoherent manner: Compare the other Laura, who goes
mad on the death of her Augustus:
Oh! cries the frantic Creature,
... hark! again do you not hear the music of the
spheres! See how he rides on yonder cloud! ... (Laura
and Augustus, III, 137). Both Lauras, though heroines
of prose works, (perhaps remembering Ophelia),
characteristically resort to iambics when mad. (41-2)

A lot of relevant
information about Austens instinct for humour is packed
into such a note. The pathos intended in Laura and Augustus
collapses into burlesque as fourteen-year-old Jane fouls up the
classical references, substituting Jupiters thunderbolts
for Cupids arrows, and introducing items like legs of
mutton and cucumbers, which in a context supposed to be pathetic
can never be anything but funny.

If parody is a
dominant mode in the juvenilia, and carries on to Northanger
Abbey and even to the late fragment Sanditon, it is
also present in Emma, though in more subtle form. Emma
Woodhouse doesnt confuse her life with a Gothic novel, as
Catherine Morland does; but she still bases her interpretation of
reality on fictional precedents, believing, for instance, that a
girl always falls in love with the man who rescues her (hence
that Harriet must be in love with Frank Churchill, and Jane
Fairfax with Mr. Dixon); and that any girl of mysterious origins
must turn out to be of noble birth (ergo that Harriet is a fit
bride for a gentleman). Reading was so vivid an experience for
Jane Austen herself that she delights in recording the errors of
those who mistake fiction for real life. So it is intriguing to
trace her steps through the literature which produced impressions
so indelible, and to record her parallels and parodies in our
literary annotations.

Annotation is an
exercise that promotes a full and informed appreciation of how
much in the way of allusion, connotation and pure brilliant wit
is packed into the prose of even the teenage Jane Austen.

The last kind of
annotation of the juvenilia I want to talk about is those notes
that connect her present prose not with the works of others, but
with her own mature fiction. In A Collection of Letters,
for instance, we encounter names well meet again, such as
Willoughby, Dashwood, and Crawford. There is also a domineering
titled woman, Lady Greville, who is clearly a trial run for Lady
Catherine de Bourgh. "I always speak my mind," as the
note informs us, is a speech common to both characters (Collection,
34, n.25). Such direct parallels can be signalled quite briefly
and crisply. When drawing attention to a recurring motif in the
novels that first appears in one of the juvenilia, however, we
permit ourselves more range. The irresponsible Edward Stanley in Catharine
kisses Kittys hand merely to exasperate her puritanical
aunt; and he thereby furnishes occasion for a mini-essay on the
kiss in Austens novels.

87. pressed
it passionately to his lips: Kisses in JAs
fiction are famously rare, considering she writes novels
of courtship. When they do occur, as here, between a man
and a woman of marriageable age (children, sisters, and
nieces are another matter), they come freighted with
tension and deviousness, as when Wickham, caught in a
lie, kisses Elizabeth Bennets hand "with
affectionate gallantry" (PP, 329). Edmund
Bertram kisses Fannys hand with "almost as
much warmth as if it had been Miss Crawfords"
(MP, 269). The most erotically charged kiss is the
one that doesnt happen, when Mr. Knightley is
"on the point of carrying [Emmas hand] to his
lips" (E, 386). A kiss on the lips is not
recorded. It is not surprising that Wentworths
kissing Anne on the streets of Bath at the close of the
1995 film version of Persuasion has outraged
purists. Emma Thompson, author of the screenplay of Sense
and Sensibility, complains (after writing in a kiss
for Elinor) "cant rely on Austen for a snog,
thats for sure" (Thompson, 228). Edward
Stanleys kiss in the present scene, albeit only of
Kittys hand, is as we discover a piece of
mischievous and misleading gallantry. (Catharine
58-9)

A note like this,
which connects the kiss in Catharine to Pride and
Prejudice, Emma, and the movie versions, requires an
extensive and intimate acquaintance with Austens work and
its adaptations. Thats what our editing process is aiming
for.

And now back to
Victoria, to tell us more about introducing Evelyn, and
its connections with the novels, especially Emma.

Victoria:Evelyn,
the first of two stories of the solemnly entitled Volume the
Third, was written in 1792, when Jane Austen was sixteen. On
first reading it, I was struck by what must strike everyone who
is introduced to it: the unconstrained imagination of its
youthful author.

The story opens with
Frederick Gower entering the village of Evelyn, which he has
never before heard of, much less visited. From the moment of his
arrival he is drawn to all he sees, to the point that he feels
that he is incapable of ever leaving it again. Just as
instantaneously as Gower forms his attachment, a rift is produced
between him and the reader, as the very elements that attract
Gower make us wary. What epitomises Evelyns reality is a
consummate symmetry. We note through Gowers eyes how
everything is of an even, "regular" shape. As he makes
his way to the home of the Webbs (who will soon become his
in-laws), we notice their perfectly circular grounds, with their
home located at the "exact" centre. Their trees and
rosebushes are placed with geometric exactitude; even the four
white cows collaborate in perfecting the setting by grazing at
equidistant intervals so as to complete the symmetry of the
scene. The rest of the ground remains "unincumbered" by
any irregularities such as mother nature so often commits - in
lesser towns, of course.

Within moments of his
arrival, Gower is received into the home of the Webbs, who are
then perfect strangers to him. They offer him more food than even
his ample appetite, or roomy pockets, can accommodate. He is also
given a purse of over a hundred pounds, which paves the way for
him to accept the much greater gift of the grounds and the house.
And just as he thought he could wish for nothing more, he spies
their eldest daughter, the beautiful Maria. The Webbs gush:

"We bow
under the weight of obligations to you which we can ever
repay. Take our girl, take our Maria, and on her must the
difficult task fall, of endeavouring to make some return
to so much Benefiscence.... Her fortune is but ten
thousand pounds, which is almost too small a sum to be
offered." (7)

On Gowers
graciously accepting the fortune, the Webbs instantly self-evict
themselves, and the very next morning Gower and Maria marry.

The reader can
perceive that the reality Gower encounters in Evelyn, from the
moment of his entering it, is one that meets, even anticipates,
his needs. The total surrender to his whims on the part of
everyone in the town, matched with the surrealism of its
symmetry, brought me to suspect that more than anything,
Evelyns very reality is one that stems from Gowers
imagination, making Evelyn precisely what Patricia Meyer
Spacks calls "an especially interesting example of the plot
of narcissism" (129).

Consequently, beyond
the strikingly comical scene, Austen creates something of a
conundrum: how can the world of Evelyn be viable when it
is created completely from the self-gratifying fantasies of a
highly egotistical man, and a fairly unimaginative man at that?
In fact, the youthful Austen did not find an answer. As we read
further into her narrative, we witness Gower having a momentous
first unselfish thought: he remembers an errand he should have
performed on behalf of his favourite sister. With this first
thought outside his own pleasure, and beyond the complete self-centredness Evelyn provides for him, Gowers world
starts to collapse. It is at this crucial point, at the brink of
Gowers (and therefore all of Evelyns) identity
crisis, that Austen leaves off writing, with what must have been
the realisation that Gower is a character that cannot be
sustained. The Austen family member who wrote the completion of Evelyn4 was also left to contend with
what could be done. As for reconciling Gower to his new reality,
the attempt falls short.

Despite the facts
that Austens own part of Evelyn remains a fragment,
and that she was unable to bridge the chasm between the
unfortunate post-narcissistic Gower and the wholly-Gower-centred
reality of Evelyn, there is much that is compelling in reading
and studying Evelyn. And in my task of introducing this
early fiction, I found that Austens later works do serve as
a compass in what otherwise might seem chaotic goings on. I set
about discovering some of Gowers self-centredness in
subsequent protagonists. Obvious choices were Catherine Morland
and Elizabeth Bennet, and once I isolated self-centredness in
them, I let myself paint in broader strokes, perhaps a little as
a caricaturist would. My search for Gowerisms proved even more
fruitful in Sense and Sensibilitys Marianne, and of
course in Emma Woodhouse. In light of these heroines, I could see
Gowers egotism as less extraordinary. Egotism, after all,
can be perceived merely as part of the complexity of an immature
self. I was then better able to see how in her early work, the
youthful Austen found, isolated and explored a natural and
legitimate fantasy common to us all, especially to the young
adult, who can so well imagine a reality that moulds itself to
every wish and whim.

If the heroines of
the mature Austen helped me to understand Gower, so Gower in turn
helped me to understand the self-absorption of these heroines, as
well as the hurdles they must clear as the world challenges them
to brave adulthood. In Emma in particular, Gowers
narcissism can be used to appreciate the fearlessly self-centred
heroine, in all her evolving stages. Emma the
"imaginist" perceives the world around her as hers to
shape; she was brought up in that faith, and even members of
Highbury society defer to her vision. At the very opening of the
novel the reader is warned of the dangers of this egotism, but
neither Emma nor her readers come really to know them until later
in the novel:

The real
evils indeed of Emmas situation were the power of
having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to
think a little too well of herself; these were the
disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many
enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so
unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as
misfortunes with her. (Emma 5-6)

But as Emma
encounters more of the world, she inevitably comes face to face
with situations that are at odds with how her imagination would
have it.

In due time she is
made to confront uncongenial facts: Mr Elton is not the least
smitten with Harriet Smith; Jane Fairfax and Mr Dixon prove
unwilling to be secretly in love, and so on. But unlike Gower,
Emma sees the need to adapt, once she is confronted with some of
the implications of the chasm between her own view and the
reality of situations around her. She faces the fact that she
"had taken up [an] idea ... and made everything bend to
it" (134), and that now it is her ideas that need to bow to
what is really there.

Emma has a supremely
Goweresque narcissistic example set her in Mr Woodhouse, who
constantly expects reality to match his imagination of it: if he
dislikes late nights, he cannot imagine how anyone might like
them; if he has a partiality for gruel, so, his logic runs, must
everyone. When, inevitably, the world cannot or will not conform,
he is profoundly pained, and he does not have the inner resources
to adjust. Emma and the rest of Mr Woodhouses Highbury
entourage understand his limitations, and they do their best to
have the world around him meet, as seamlessly as possible, his
inner vision.

Despite her
fathers example, indeed because of it, Emma opts otherwise.
Her resolve is made conclusive in her choice of Mr Knightley as
her life partner, "one of the few people who could see
faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of
them" (11) - someone completely unlike the partner Frederick
Gower would choose for himself, and one whom, we imagine, only
the more grownup Emma can welcome as an equal.

Juliet: As the
author of the Introduction to the Juvenilia Press Evelyn,
Victoria had the chance to develop her critical skills and
develop the parallels between Austens early and later
writings -as other members of our teams have honed their capacity
to track down recondite historical facts and literary analogues
for the purpose of writing explanatory notes. The last aspect of
our project I want to touch on is illustration; for this too
furnishes a way into Jane Austens world.

Except for The
History of England, which comes with Cassandra Austens
charming portraits of monarchs (drawn in little circles traced
around a half-guinea piece), her books initially came without
pictures. The Juvenilia Press has changed all that. Illustrators
like Hugh Thompson and C.E. Brock may have preceded us with the
finished novels, but we take the juvenilia to be open territory
for the many closet illustrators who are apt to lurk in English
classes. Our books have pictures, and many of them.

Cassandra
Austens pictures of The History of England are
virtually innocent of period consciousness. Her Richard III is
dressed no differently from her Charles I; her wicked Queen
Elizabeth comes with no Tudor ruff. Her portraits of Henry V and
Edward IV are lifted, headgear and all, from a satirical
engraving called "The Recruits" of 1780.5 (Figure 1)

Figure 1.

Cassandra
Austen's portraits of Henry V and Edward IV, as borrowed
from the 1780 engraving, "The Recruits."

There is considerable
potential for period research in the process of illustrating Jane
Austens juvenilia, as our student illustrators too have
discovered. As General Editor I am certainly less exacting about
accuracy in this context than in the annotations. But the
learning process in the creation of our editions extends to the
graphics as well as the letterpress. Our illustrators do their
homework in period architecture, coaches and travel, and
particularly dress and fashion. Lesley Castle includes
images of Whitehall Palace, Montagu House on Portman Square, and
even Bristol Hotwells, which was long ago demolished.

And we are keen on
maps. In her juvenilia young Jane never confined herself to those
3 or 4 families in a country village: she sends her characters to
the Lake District in England, Gretna Green and castles in
Scotland, and the Vale of Usk in Wales. Our maps keep our readers
au fait with this geography. The map for Evelyn
(Figure 3) shows Gowers journey as traced by his
horses hoofprints.

Figure 3.
The map for Evelyn

You see that the
readers of adventure fantasies like Tolkiens Lord of the
Rings would be right at home with our books of Janes
juvenilia! And our participating editors, among other things, get
a crash course in British geography.

Research and critical
thinking have undoubtedly gone into all of this. But I confess
our illustrations are mostly for fun: as witness Pauline
Morels joyous cover drawing of the totally self-indulgent
Gower (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

The cover of Evelyn.
Illustration by Pauline Movel, design by Winston Pei.

And the fun we have
in producing our scholarly editions of Austens outrageously
comic juvenilia may be the best teaching and learning process of
all.

Notes

1 We use the Chapman edition of
Austens six novels, but since this is a paper about the
volumes of the Juvenilia Press, references to the juvenilia are
keyed to those volumes rather than to Chapman.

4 See the "Note on the
Text" to the Juvenilia Press edition of Evelyn, where
Peter Sabor presents an innovative and insightful analysis of the
authorship of the completion. See also his "James Edward
Austen, Anna Lefroy, and the Interpellations to Jane
Austens Volume the Third," forthcoming in Notes
and Queries.

5 See Jan Ferguss
Introduction to the Juvenilia Press edition of A History of
England, ii-iii.